Remake of Dante's Inferno?

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Yeah, that's an idea I've got right now. To basically retell the story of a living person descending bodily into hell-- with the help of a guide. How to bring this classic into the 21st century? Apparently, Dante's voyage into the underworld was a perhaps a metaphor for his midlife crisis, but I think my protagonist should be someone younger.

But wait-- "mid-life" in the 1400's was probably something like the age I am now, 29.

Thoughts, anyone? Questions? Comments? All are welcome.

Do you mean you want to write it down? When so.... Go for it.
I've never read Dante's Inferno myself, I believe it's a bit too grim for my taste. And I am not a religious man, you probably know. Would you recommend it, me reading it?

Good luck and later,
C.

Why would you want to besmirch a classic piece of literature with your sub-par writing ability and more importantly, a lack of understanding how to tell a story.

Dante's inferno had a message, like all great pieces of literature.
If you're going to re-write a masterpiece just because you feel like it, then the end product's guaranteed to be a worthless piece of crap.

Ain't nothing wrong with recycling plot ideas in literature. If literature ain't a living thing, then it's dead.

I believe The Tempest was the only play written by Shakespeare that had an original plot. All the rest he borrowed, and turned into something new.

Shakespeare's work is not generally considered crap for that reason. I think his stuff is still pretty good. The original stories are now merely footnotes on Shakespeare's plays.

A lot of stuff Lewis Carrol wrote was parodies of stuff that was universally popular at the time he was writing. Everybody has forgotten the originals, and only the parodies remain, now.

I haven't read Dante, but it's my understanding that it was originally written as a satire on whatever was going on in the politics of his time. The book's still around, but only a handful of literary historians have any idea what it was intended to be about.

I kinda like the idea of a descent into hell involving Bush, Obama, and Palin.

This is good to know.

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle kind of beat you to it, back in 1976...

D'oh!

It can still be done.
I'm right now outlining Paradise Lost/ I want to retell it using modern 20th and 21st century metaphors.

As for the Inferno, look at it like the trilogy it was originally written as. Show your friends in Paradise, and your enemies in Inferno. Brush up on your Catholic mythology of purgatory and hell, etc..


good luck

While he's often accused of doing so, Dante didn't actually just put his enemies in Hell. One of the most touching moments in the Inferno is where he meets Brunetto Latini; Ser Brunetto was Dante's old tutor and one of his dearest friends. There's this conflict in a few places between Dante's attachments to the people concerned and his moral view of their sins; all part of what makes the Inferno interesting.

Re the timing, from personal experience I think thirty-five is still an excellent age to be lost in a dark wood. A lot of people I know have had some kind of crisis at around that age, including me. If you're sneaky, you can fiddle with the timing like Dante did; setting it some years before he actually wrote it, to let his characters correctly foretell future events...

are you going to put contemporary political figures in hell? & is it still a literal descent into hell, or will it be allegorised? who do you have in mind for the guide? Dante himself?

Vorzac: great pieces of literature do not have 'a message', or at least any messages that can be extracted from them are beside the point, & superfluous to the pleasures one derives from them. messages are what one gets from public service announcements, newspaper editorials, tv adverts, etc.

Thank you.